Rift in Harmony

As dusk started to crawl in, Truth Turner, a unicorn from PonyVille, ran off toward his downtown home. Now, Truth Turner was a stallion with a bluish-grey coat and a grey mane. He wasn’t elderly. In fact, he had actually just recently reached adulthood. He was a stallion in his prime. His mane was always unkempt and he always had some dirt on his hooves. He burst through the door of his house and galloped over to his older brother, Time Turner, who was busily preparing their evening meal.

“Time Turner! Time Turner! You won’t believe what I just saw!” He said leaping around. He always was of the excitable sort.

“Let me guess,” His brother said, “you saw a human again…”

Truth Turner was little confused why Time Turner seemed so agitated. I would guess it was probably because he had just received some type of a difficult, frustrating order in his clock shop, but what do I know? Anyway, he sure seemed un-ordinarily hostile.

“Congratulations!” Time Turner snapped, “You, the intelligent, all knowing, and always correct unicorn of the family, have fooled me, your gullible earth pony brother, once more!”

His words really stunned Truth Turner and his eyes started to well up.

“No! I’m serious!” Truth frantically replied, “It was running off toward the Appaloosan Mountains and…”

Time Turner held up his hoof to stop him. He took in a deep breath and sighed.

“Truth,” he said, “we are not colts anymore. Humans are just a fillytales. Now, I’m sorry for shouting at you, but they just don’t exist and they never will.”

Truth Turner didn’t know how to respond.

“Now please grow up, stop all this human nonsense, and get ready for dinner”

Truth Turner slowly climbed up the stairs. He wondered if it had really been a human that he saw. He really didn’t know what else it could be. Maybe it was one of those diamond dogs who live in the caves of Appaloosan Mountains, or maybe it was some type of dragon. Both of those answers really didn’t make much sense. Diamond dogs would never venture down into PonyVille and whatever he saw was definitely larger than that assistant of the town librarian, the only dragon anypony ever saw walking around town.

He decided that he had to take action. He swung out the second story window, as he often did from time to time to avoid chores, and landed on the roof of his home. The hay roof had been trodden down a bit from his many other escapes. He then jumped down some of the various crates that were against the side of his house, and he ran off to the only other pony that he thought would listen.

He walked up to the cottage that was situated on the edge of PonyVille. It was a small sized home and it was supported by an oversized hot air balloon. The house floated a couple inches off the ground and was tethered to the ground to stop it from flying away.

Truth Turner knocked rapidly on the door, looked behind him to see if there was an annoyed brother tailing him, and looked back to see a somewhat flustered pony with a hoof shaped bruise on his face.

“Uh… hello there, my friend” the pony said a little confused, “What brings you here? Shouldn’t you be at home? enjoying supper?”

He spoke with a slight British accent. His name was Cheery Overview, but most just called him Cheery’O. Don’t let his name fool you. He was one of the least cheerful ponies in PonyVille. I’m not saying that he was depressed, but it’s just that he always seemed to be so unmotivated. He just liked to be by himself with all of his foreign knick-knacks and shelves of sophisticated books. He was always cooped up inside his home.

He was a rare type of pony. One known as a wingless pegasus. Cheery’O could do pretty much anything any other pegasus could do. Wingless pegasi can walk on clouds and even control weather to a small degree, but, as the name implies, they’re without a pair of wings. His coat was a pale yellow and was very similar to the one of his nature loving neighbor. His mane was an odd shade of bright green and, no matter what, it had a cowlick that always curled the same way.

His home smelled of fancy imported hay.

“No!” Truth Turner quickly replied, “well… yes actually, but this is much more important, and my brother won’t listen to me!”

Truth Turner’s breathe was a bit short from his long run over here.

“Well I suppose I could listen…It’s not like I was having supper…”

Now, Cheery’O had always been a bit of a pushover to Truth Turner. He often found it too taxing to try to fight with his persistence, and, even if he did successfully refuse him, he would often let his conscious get the best of him and end up going along anyway.

“Great! I knew you’d listen!”

“As if I had a choice…”

“Please! Quiet!” interupted Truth Turner, “Okay, So here I was walking through the market. I was doing some errands for Crafty and…”

Here he started to worry. He just realized that he had never done those errands he had promised Crafty he would do. Crafty was one of his other good friends who often had a bit of a temper, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll describe her in more detail later.

“Oh my gosh! I forgot to get that fabric for Crafty! Oh she’s gonna be so mad that. I don’t even want to think about what she'll do!”

He started prancing about with worry.

“Then don’t,” said Cheery’O very plainly, “just get this story over with.”

“Oh! Yes! So, I was walking through town when I saw....”

"A human?"

“Yes! Did you see him too!?"

Cheery’O rubbed his forehead in frustration. He took a bit of time to figure out what he was going to say. He didn’t dare want to upset Truth Turner, but he definitely didn’t want to take any part in this new escapade.

“Truth…” he said slowly, “It’s not that I don’t believe your tale. I really do, but it’s just that the last time I followed you on one of your… uh… expeditions, we were out there in the middle of the Everfree Forest stuck for hours on a wild goose chase, or should I say, a wild bear chase.”

“But this time there’s proof!” he responded with enthusiasm, “If we hurry, the footprints should be still on the outskirts of town!”

Cheery’O was turning around to go back inside, but he stopped upon hearing the word ‘footprints’ and sighed.

“Fine,” Cheery’O said with bit exasperation, “I’ll go see your ‘footprints’. Just let me have a bit to eat and then we’ll be on our waaay!”

Truth Turner  grabbed Cheery’O’s hoof and was pulling him down the stairs of his house.

“There is no time! We gotta go now!” he said.

“What? It’s not like the footprints are going anywhere!”

They then rushed off to the other side of town with empty stomachs and mixed opinions.

By this time, the human had ventured much farther into to wilderness. He couldn’t  see the skyline of PonyVille now, and surrounding him was nothing but rocks and the occasional mound of dirt. The place was plantless. Completely barren. Not even moss could survive on the soil of the deep Appaloosan Mountains.

He had been running for what seemed like ages. His stomach was caving in, and his legs were on the verge of snapping like twigs. He did had a bit of time to try and collect his thoughts. There weren’t really any good ones.

He sighed and started to talk to himself.

“I guess this should be far enough, but what do I do now?”

He leaned over to catch his breathe resting his hands on his knees. He had only been running for only about half an hour, but he wasn’t really the athletic type.

“I need to find somewhere to stay while I’m stuck here. Some type of base of operations. Out of sight from everybody… or everypony…or whatever!”

He scanned the horizon. The lack of any type of foliage made hiding anything a challenge, and building some type of a structure would definitely be a waste of time and energy.  He did spot that on the side of a cliff about half a mile away there were what appeared to be caverns, and he decided that those would have to do for now.

“I guess I’ll just go hide out in one of those caves. It’s not like anypony could survive out here. All there is out here is just rocks. Nothing could survive out here …wait, then how do I survive then?”

He stopped and tried to think for a minute, but that was quickly interrupted by the rustling of a couple stones behind him. It sent a shock up his spine as cold as a blade.

“Who’s there?!”

No one responded, but he could hear a faint panting sound.

“I gotta get away! If I’m seen, reality will fall apart!”

He ran off toward the caves dodging the various outcroppings and ledges placed ahead of him. Behind him, he could hear the disturbance of gravel, and then he knew he was being followed. If only he chose the correct that cave to hide in, then maybe it would have stalled the unraveling of fate.

The cave he dove into was not as deep as he had hoped, and before he knew it he was cornered. He heard footsteps approaching him and braced himself for the confrontation that he thought would destroy the universe.

It didn’t.

What? Why am I telling you all these details? Do you just want a simple explaination?... Where's the fun in that! I need to tell you everything or the story won't make sense! I told you that this story would seem to get off track! Which it's not!

I guess I should thank you anyway. You are the most patient being in the universe for sitting here and listening to me. I would love to continue, but it seems that visiting hours are almost to a close. I would say that I hope you return, but I know your curiosity will cause you to come back. I'll see you tomorrow.